Tails From The Ho Chi Minh Trail-The Ravens Part 2-Their Story

This is the second installment in the Raven series, this video Ravens telling their stories. The stories they tell are thrilling, sad, dangerous, and poignant, of their life and death missions flying combat during the Laos Secret War. Please see Ravens I: Mission and Men on my channel. While most Americans watched the Vietnam War on television, another bloody conflict was transpiring next door, hidden from the news cameras and print journalists. A very small, select, group of volunteer U.S. Air Force pilots in a highly secret U.S. government program were fighting a secret war, wearing civilian clothes, piloting small, unarmed prop-driven aircraft, taking life-and-death risks on every hazardous mission and given little to no supervision and guidance other than to direct deadly fires on the enemy. These men were U.S. fighters and FAC pilots turned Airborne Forward Air Controllers (FAC), called Ravens, guiding fast-mover U.S. fixed-wing fighters and bombers onto enemy targets in an effort to stop the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The Raven program came about during the U.S. Secret War in Laos which was fought at the same time as the Vietnam conflict, and in fact rather than Vietnam, Laos could have been the conflict the U.S. became primarily embroiled in. My video ‘What was the U.S. Secret War in Laos’ will provide you a full understanding of the war.